POEM: “What You Prefer” — He’s attentive, and caring, but asks no questions / And everything he knows about you—from the Internet.

Screamer

What You Prefer

BAD FEMINIST, they’d shout at me, they’d say
if I told them I can justify my abuser this way:

You muse a person, and you use their image
And you make these self-centred projections
You write their story one-way in fictions
And you wonder how you fed their hatred?!

Everything they say is so bloody great
You re-create and what they give you take
As your own, bitch, you own their stake
You usurp their intentions and broadcast it?!

Every woman wants the man to know them
When he says, “I know what you like,” she challenges him
He’s attentive, and caring, but asks no questions
And everything he knows about you—from the Internet.

The one-way, the skate-way slippery slope
From SOME emails, two visits, to all that hope
Telling people, “we’re seeing each other” – nope
And owning it like it’s been for ages now.

I justify it that he was kind and nice
And clear in his communications every time
He was gentle with his message, not one lie, why?
He preserved my feelings, alright, that night.

He could ruin me in a word
He could stare me dead.
And he did kill me that morning
In Bloomsbury not on the bed.

But I recognize it – call me bad Feminist.
I am him – call me self-blaming victim.
I get it – call me Woman With Baggage.
I am him – waiting to happen.

“You’re NOT like him,” a friend might say
but little do they know in which way.
See, he actually saved face and my feelings:
Ask me how I deal with a person’s musings.

I destroy, I resent, I hate, and defy.
My directness shuns you for life.
I ridicule you, diminish you quite slyly
And my public humiliation is quite lively.

BAD FEMINIST, they’d shout at me, they’d say
if I told them I can justify my abuser this way:

The mused is abused by one-way preoccupation
And so do you not expect them to retaliate?
And even mine stayed quiet, vanished: no communication
And that he did not surface….
And that he did not condemn…
That he continued to respond when written to him…

…is not flower after a beating nor an “I’m sorry.”
It’s a “I told you what I was like and you might not like me in person.”
And so – he gave me free range, let me do my poetry
And so – he sucked it up as I wrote it in story.

Don’t think for a moment he couldn’t get organized
He has, that’s why you’ll never go to New Zealand.
Don’t think for a moment he didn’t apologize
He did, but you preferred to cry.

Sylvie Hill, February 2019